


(is your heart) singing out of tune

by emmalauren



Series: drabbles/fluff/prompts [7]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, F/M, NECESSARY CONVERSATION, TW: Blood, TW: Panic Attacks, and comforting nini, basically it's just hurt ricky, here we are, i started writing it after homecoming had aired but before i'd seen the whole thing, i think, so all i knew is that gina kissed ricky on the cheek, that's the context i had, this takes place before homecoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21796045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmalauren/pseuds/emmalauren
Summary: Ricky's been wandering in the dark for far too long, but when he ends up alone, can Nini shed some light on the situation?
Relationships: Ricky Bowen & Nini Salazar-Roberts, Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Series: drabbles/fluff/prompts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1172693
Comments: 3
Kudos: 173





	(is your heart) singing out of tune

**Author's Note:**

> wow hsmtmts was NOT supposed to be good but it is and wow am i in love with joshua bassett and olivia rodrigo hahaHA
> 
> (also, i was not team gina at the time of writing, and i am still team ricky/nini ALL THE WAY, but i want gina to be happy :/)
> 
> TW: panic attacks and blood

Ricky had been told a million times by a combination of his parents, Nini, and Nini’s mom, Mrs. Salazar, that skateboarding without a helmet was not only stupid but dangerous as well. He had listened… for the most part, especially when he had been dating Nini. Today, however, he was feeling reckless. 

Ms. Jenn had held what felt like their hundredth rehearsal that week, this time going over Get’cha Head in the Game, a number in which Carlos had Ricky and E.J. doing a dizzying series of spins, passes, and one complicated hip-hop move that had Ricky’s knee swelling up like a water balloon. It had, of course, been a complete and utter disaster. E.J. was still wary around Ricky and basketballs, and Ricky’s dad had been blowing up his phone all night with updates from Chicago, where both of his parents were to handle ‘certain matters’, which Ricky was sure was code for ‘divorce proceedings’. Carlos had already threatened phone jail, which Ricky wanted absolutely nothing to do with, but there was no denying he was distracted throughout practice. Gina, for some unknown reason, was loitering on the edges of the stage, occasionally muttering something to Carlos about choreo. Ricky was still uncomfortable after their conversation the other day, especially considering it now seemed the four of them were stuck in some sort of love square Ricky wanted no part in. He was in love with Nini, that much was clear, some voice from deep within his mind voicing it loud and clear in butterflies crashing within his stomach every time she sang at rehearsal, or even rounded a corner and made eye contact with him. Gina and E.J. were just confusing complications. Ricky had fled rehearsal as soon as he could, flying past Ms. Jenn, even as she called after him about notes. He would deal with that on Monday, but for now, his guitar and an empty house were calling. 

Ricky was half-way down the driveway out of East High when he realized he had forgotten his helmet in his locker. He fidgeted for a moment, staring back at school - he had another one at home, so it wasn’t like he’d be skating without a helmet all weekend. It was a ten-minute ride, and the sun was just setting, so he wouldn’t be riding in the dark. He shook his head, turning back towards the end of the road, pushing off the pavement with his right foot, coasting down the street and into the dusk. 

He was three and a half minutes away from home when he tripped. The sidewalk had been overgrown for a while now, the tree roots reclaiming the space the pavement currently clung to, pushing the cement upwards and breaking it into fractured pieces. He had been careful enough to avoid it in the past, but he was distracted, the guitar from Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends thrumming heavily in his ears. He hit the ground before he could even process what had happened, head smacking against the pavement with a dull thud. The pain was bearable, just a throb through his temples, but the blood was dark and plentiful. He was not trained in First Aid, and Grey’s Anatomy didn’t qualify as medicinal knowledge. There was no way this wasn’t going to end badly if he went home. Ricky stood, stumbling slightly, assessing the damage - his head was still bleeding the most, and his hands and knees were scraped, a bruise blooming on his right side. With a sigh and a wince at the sudden pang in his head, Ricky got back on his skateboard and took a right instead of a left at the end of the street. He knew where he needed to go. 

“Hi - holy shit, Ricky.” Nini was holding an ice cream bar in her right hand, mouth slightly agape, staring at Ricky’s forehead with wide eyes. 

“Look, I know you told me a thousand times never to ride without a helmet, but it’s not a long ride, and everyone was leaving, and I was half-way out, and besides, my locker is on the other side of the building, and I stopped paying attention for half a second, and there were no cars, and the sidewalk is overgrown, okay, and the town council should really do something about that, and head wounds bleed a lot, and I shouldn’t have come.”

“Ricky, you are bleeding. All over my carpet.” Nini stuttered, still staring, stock still.

“Oh, my God, you are right, I am so sorry, I should really go, and I will come back in the morning with no currently-bleeding wounds to help you clean that up.” Ricky took a step back, cursing himself internally, dropping his skateboard, ready to just get away and hopefully not die overnight. 

“No, Ricky, oh my God, please come inside. My moms are out, but I have my First Aid certificate, and we have a kit in the upstairs bathroom.” Ricky breathed a sigh of silent relief, setting his skateboard down by the door and kicking off his shoes, the habits he had formed in this house coming home to roost like an invisible blanket settling around his shoulders. He followed Nini up the stairs, trying as best as he could to stop the blood from dripping onto the cream carpet. Dana had never liked the color red very much. They stepped into Nini’s bathroom, and Ricky hid a smile - it was a mess, makeup littered across the counter, hair-dryer, and hairbrush on the floor, where Nini always sat to do her hair in the mornings. It was painfully familiar, a routine he was no longer supposed to know the steps to. Nini grabbed the First-Aid kit, and practically pushed Ricky into her bedroom and sitting him down in her desk chair, switching on the lamp with a decisive click and getting to work, hair swinging across her shoulders as she examined his forehead, gnawing on her lip in concentration. With a frustrated sigh, she opened the First Aid kit, pulling out a disinfectant wipe and putting it to Ricky’s wound. He winced, pulling away slightly, the sting strong and persistent.  
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, this is going to hurt.” Nini’s British accent was back in all its glory, her nerves showing clearly on her face. 

“Nini?” Ricky asked slowly, trying not to move for fear the sting of the disinfectant would increase. 

“Yeah?” 

“You’re doing the accent thing.” Nini closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly, before cracking a slight grin, continuing to wipe away the blood. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You never need to be sorry for being you, Nini. I hope you know that.” Nini paused, face frozen only inches away from Ricky’s. She stayed there for a moment, eyes staring into Ricky’s, blinking slowly. She exhaled, seemingly seeing something in his eyes, pulling backward and tossing the bloody wipe into the trash before turning back to the kit beside her, rummaging to find something else. 

“Kourtney thinks I’ve lost who I really am. That ever since you and I started dating, I’ve spent too much time looking at myself through the lens of guys. E.J., you, and I don’t know, Ricky, I think she’s right.” It was a painful realization, a blow to the stomach, mainly because Ricky knew, deep down, that Kourtney was right. He didn’t speak, simply nodded for Nini to continue, not wanting to interrupt her in the middle of her own monologue.  
“She’s right, Ricky. I spent a year in this bedroom, making myself believe I was satisfied playing a cow in Gypsy, not fighting for what I wanted, just settling, because I had you, and I was happy, and I thought that was enough. And then summer happened, and I was scrambling, because I had spent a year just being content, and I didn’t know what to do now, because I could do everything, but I had paralyzed myself. So, of course, instead of pushing myself, I settled again, because E.J. was nice and sweet, and we had the same interests, so why wouldn’t I want to get with that kind of guy. Who liked me? Who loved me?” Nini’s voice cracked on the last part, turning away from Ricky for a moment, sitting down on her bed, hands clasped in her lap, tugging on the fingers on her right hand with her left.  
“That nice guy poisoned a girl, a girl who did not at all deserve it because he was ‘doing what was best for me’. I did not want that. I did not need to be saved. Of course, I come back here and think everything’s perfect, and that everything is going to work out just fine, and then E.J. steals my phone, and you’re not in love with me, but I don’t know, you can’t let this go, Ricky! And here I am, in my bedroom with the guy who doesn’t love me back, and the overwhelming feeling that all I am doing is digging myself further into this hole.” Nini was gesturing wildly at this point, and all Ricky could do was stare, forced back into his memories - the first time she had sung to him on the floor by the window, the chair where they had first made out, the pillows in the corner the only remnants of the fort they had built together that had still stood the day Ricky had surrendered because he was a coward. 

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, just take a seat. Breathe, okay?” Ricky was floundering - he had only seen Nini cry and truly fall apart seven heartbreaking times throughout the course of their relationship, and each time he had felt he was insufficiently equipped to deal with it like he was falling just short of what she needed at that moment. He had, however, been through his own fair share of pain and heartbreak in the few short months they had been apart, and panic attacks now felt like a familiar language. “I get it. It’s been a long few months for me too. But don’t let what happened stop you from going places now. Listen, Kourtney didn’t tell you this to send you into an overanalytical spiral. She told you this so you would start to realize that you are worth so much more than me or E.J. or anyone else. So when you feel yourself start to settle again, you can just flip off the universe and go find another place to make your mark.” Ricky didn’t know how he ended up kneeling in front of Nini, but she was smiling at this point, so it couldn’t have been a terrible speech. 

“I guess.” Nini sniffled, raising her head to stare at the ceiling, blinking to clear the tears welling in her eyes. 

“No, no, nope, ‘I guess’, is not good enough. Come on, you, Ms. Salazar-Roberts, are Gabriella Montez, and Gabriella Montez took control of her own narrative. She would never let a stupid boy like Troy Bolton decide her future.” Nini laughed at that, bringing her head down to meet Ricky’s eyes, then glanced up to the long-forgotten cut on his forehead. 

“The good news is I don’t think you’re going to need stitches. The cut really isn’t that deep, and it’ll heal on its own with a little antiseptic, Neosporin, and maybe a Hello Kitty bandaid or two. I know I have one around here.” Nini slid off the bed, rummaging through one drawer and then tossing clothes around, digging through another pile on the floor. Ricky, getting to his feet, came to search with her, this time in a box half-shoved under her bed. There were a few clothes in there - two sweatshirts and a shirt Ricky realized with a start were his, long forgotten in the chaos of the past few months. Beneath that was a scrapbook, and then, hidden at the bottom, was a pile of polaroids. They were all instantly recognizable to Ricky, some of him, others taken by him, all once decorating either Nini’s wall or stuck in the back of her phone case. He sucked in a breath, reaching out to touch one before slamming the lid back on the box and shoving the box under the bed. “Ricky? Is everything okay?” Nini asked, rounding the corner of her bed, staring down at him with wide eyes. Ricky tucked his hands under his legs, trying to hide the shaking. 

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Just banged my head on the bed frame.” Nini didn’t look convinced but held out one hand to help him up anyway.  
“Thank you so much, Nini.”

“That’s what friends do, right? Really, Ricky, I meant what I said the other night. If everything at home ever gets too crazy, or something like this happens again, you are always, always welcome here.” Ricky smiled wistfully, before slowly taking his hand back from where they were intertwined. Nini gazed up at him for a moment before reaching upwards, sticking the Hello Kitty bandaid across his forehead with a decisive smirk. 

“I should go. But, thank you.”

By the time Ricky got home, the sun was down, the sky shifting from light pink to deep violet, punctured only by the slow awakening of Salt Lake City lights. Normally, Ricky would rush up to his room or down to the basement to play a video game or work on homework, but tonight, he took his time, slow and meandering, dropping his skateboard by the door and switching on all the lights, stopping on the landing to admire Nini’s handiwork in the mirror - a bright pink Hello Kitty bandaid adorned his forehead like a modern ‘kick me’ sign. Despite everything, Ricky had to laugh. It wasn’t until he reached his bedroom door that the lethargy shook itself off, and the hummingbird beat of his heart resumed. Beneath his bed was a matching box to Nini’s, this one with pages of song lyrics, and Polaroids littering the bottom. Leafing through the pages with a focused intensity, Ricky finally found what he was looking for, pulling it loose with a grand reverence too momentous for the house on the corner of Bluebell Street. And yet, there it was, scrawled in his handwriting, neat notes in Nini’s handwriting beneath the title. 

“Just for a moment.” Ricky breathed, sitting down, hard. “Let us love one another for just a moment longer.” And suddenly, faster than he could even realize what was happening, Ricky smiled, a grand smile to light up the room, then a great, big, heaving breath, and then tears, tears to blur the sky and bring the ceiling down onto his shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> i love this show so much. they are all so talented, and i can't wait for ep 7!!!!
> 
> as always, find me on tumblr @emma-laurennn with all your thoughts, comments, and ideas!!


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